General Topics

We aim to provide you with as much information about primarily UK Final Salary Schemes and especially solvency levels, funding rates and how much employers are contributing to the scheme and recovery plans.

We aim to constantly update the site with new information about various UK schemes and aim to increase the number of Final Salary Schemes reviewed and ensure that you, the trust Financial Adviser or the client have the information you need to make an informed decision.

We also offer news updates on a whole host of pension information, whether this relates to Final Salary Schemes, State Pensions or the latest information on changes in legislation.

The team at Pension-Statistics.com are pension analysts and experts who primarily provide independent pension scheme analysis and solvency reports on UK and major global pension schemes. The team all have many years of experience within the pensions industry and have a real passion for digesting information, often convoluted and bogged down with financial jargon, and presenting it in a way that can be easily understood by the average pension member.

Our clients range from private individuals to large multi-national corporations who rely on the analysis of Penion-Statistics.com in order to develop their own client offerings and ensure that they have the correct factual information available to them when interacting with their clients.

Our primary purpose for the site is to provide information on UK Final Salary Schemes funding levels and solvency issues.

Decisions, especially if you are an expatriate, regarding the transfer of UK final salary pensions and the various options require specialist advice and also a knowledge of all the facts and available options.

Our intention is to provide clients and their trusted advisers with all relevant facts about the existing UK Schemes, especially focusing on Final Salary Schemes. Whilst the benefits of SIPPS and QROPS are plentiful and should be carefully considered in the advice process a knowledge of the current schemes solvency should also be taken into account. Whilst there are some very good and well funded UK schemes it must be borne in mind that there are very few Final Salary Schemes available nowadays and most are underfunded and have solvency issues.

Even if you have no intention of looking at alternative options available to you it is worth reviewing your pension scheme on an annual basis in order to avoid any nasty shocks in retirement.

To think your Final Salary Pension is gold plated and fully guaranteed may be wishful thinking.

Sweeping changes introduced seven years ago which were designed to simplify the UK’s pension system have failed miserably, according to a survey of financial advisers.

Friday will mark seven years to the day that the ‘A-Day’ pension reforms hit the UK, which saw the lifetime allowance introduced, tax-free lump sums set at 25 per cent, and flexible company pension arrangements put in place.

But the changes, not to mention the countless alterations to the pensions system since 2006, have left savers more confused than ever, according to research from Unbiased.co.uk in which 83 per cent of financial advisers said A-Day had done nothing to make pensions easier to understand.

Unbiased chief executive Karen Barrett said: ‘The UK pension system has dramatically changed over the last few years; with different governments come different ideas and it’s unlikely that this will cease.

‘What’s clear is that relying on the state will not provide you with a comfortable retirement and the trend of moving the responsibility of the funding of retirement from state to individual is one that is sure to continue.’

The last seven years have seen upheaval in the pensions industry, not least the introduction of auto-enrolment last October which will see millions brought into pension schemes for the first time over the next five years, as the Government frantically tries to cushion the financial cliff of workers reaching retirement.

But A-Day only ranked second for having the worst effect on pension saving since 2006, with financial advisers identifying decreasing the annual tax-free allowance as having has damaged savers the most.

The annual allowance – the maximum amount someone could save into a pension each year while still gaining tax relief – stood at £215,000 when A-Day came into force, but this has reduced to £50,000 currently and will decrease even further next April to £40,000.

Other damaging changes to pensions identified by advisers includes the capped levels of income drawdown, the creation of the single-tier pension and scrapping the default retirement age of 65.

60 per cent of advisers said their clients had lost confidence in pensions, while 17 per cent have been put off saving into a pension due to poor annuity rates.

The answer? According to the research, the system would improve if the Government were to stop tinkering.

Around half of those surveyed think that no more changes should be introduced for at least the next five years, when auto-enrolment has been fully rolled out.